Much as I have ostensibly learned since I started writing about wine, and as lucky as I have been to have tasted some of the renowned vintages, I’m not sure that I’ve ever enjoyed a bottle of wine more than I did that Mateus rosé back in the Berkshires in 1972. I’d lately acquired my driver’s license and was in the company of my first love, with the night and the entire summer stretched out ahead of me like a river full of fat, silvery, pink-fleshed rainbow trout. The wine tasted like summer, and it was about to become the taste of my first real kiss.
Acid Trips
SOME WHITES AND PINKS TO START
White Wine on the Rocks: Chablis
Is it possible to taste minerals in fermented grape juice? Can the roots of the grapevine somehow transmit the unique characteristics of soil and bedrock to the grape itself? Is it a gross abuse of poetic license to detect marine elements in a wine grown on limestone that was once a Jurassic seabed? You might never have asked these questions, but they go to the heart of the French notion of terroir—the idea that a wine’s qualities are determined by its place of origin. Nowhere do these questions seem more relevant than in Chablis.
“Chablis, oh yeah, that’s the stuff my mom used to drink out of a box,” a friend told me when I ordered a glass before dinner. “Yeah, right,” I said. “And that watch I bought on the street for twenty bucks when I moved to New York was a genuine Rolex.”
Like Vuitton or Chanel, Chablis is a world-famous brand that has inspired countless knockoffs and counterfeits over the years. Some of my own earliest encounters with fermented grapes involved something called Almaden California Mountain Chablis, a product that’s still on the market. But le vrai Chablis, which comes from the northernmost vineyards of Burgundy, is less understood than almost any other major wine type, even though it’s made from Chardonnay, the world’s favorite white grape. With several terrific vintages currently available on our shores, this is a very good time to come to terms with Chablis.
For hundreds of years tasters have invoked the sea when talking about Chablis, and just as frequently limestone and even flint. Actually, there’s a geological basis for these seemingly fanciful associations. The bedrock underlying the region of Chablis is part of what the geologist James Wilson, in his book Terroir, calls the Kimmeridgian chain—a huge Cretaceous/Jurassic deposit of chalky marl and limestone riddled with fossil seashells, notably Exogyra virgule, a small, comma-shaped oyster. The White Cliffs of Dover are part of this vast formation, which rises and falls beneath north-central France. It crops up in the Loire regions of Sancerre and Pouilly, and then farther west in Chablis. It could be a coincidence that Sancerre and Chablis, though the former is made from the Sauvignon Blanc grape, are traditionally considered perfect wines to accompany oysters. On the other hand, romantics, and certain geologists, think it may have something to do with the prehistoric oyster shells underneath the vineyards. I can’t necessarily explain the chemistry of flavor, but I can say if you have never had oysters with Chablis, you should try to rectify this failure immediately.
Chablis is a great food wine, although some true believers seem to hate to mix it up with solids. According to the Beastie Boy Mike Diamond, a serious fan, “It pairs so well with so many foods, yet it’s almost an injustice to share a really good Dauvissat or Raveneau with food. I kind of prefer to hog it all to myself, savoring every sip.”
Although Chablis is officially part of Burgundy, its unique geology, combined with the fact that it lies almost fifty miles from the northernmost vineyards of the Côte d’Or, makes its whites quite different from those of Meursault or Puligny. According to The Oxford Companion to Wine: “There is a unique streak of steely acidity, a firm flintiness, and a mineral quality that is not found elsewhere in Burgundy.” And if they’re distinct from their Burgundian cousins, they are light-years removed from New World Chardonnays. If you are accustomed to the ripe, tropical-fruit style of old-school Sonoma Chardonnays, like Kistler or Sonoma-Cutrer or Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve, you may have a hard time detecting the family resemblance of Chardonnay grown in chilly Chablis. This is Chardonnay unplugged and stripped down to its essence, like Eric Clapton’s acoustic version of “Layla.”
Whenever I think about comparing Chablis with Cali Chardonnay, I think of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Truman Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the part; she could have been great, but it would have been a very different movie. And Chardonnay grown in Chablis’s Serein River Valley as opposed to the Napa Valley comes out very different indeed. Young Chablis is lean and racy, although with age the best Chablis takes on a dazzling richness.
One of the best things about Chablis is that it’s possible to experience its unique character even in the less expensive bottlings. When you spend even $20 on a Village wine from a quality-oriented producer, there is no mistaking where it is from. Chablis shares Burgundy’s system of vineyard hierarchy—Grand Cru being the highest designation followed by Premier Cru and finally Village wine, labeled simply “Chablis.” The seven Grands Crus all occupy a single contiguous southwest-facing hillside across the valley from town. The Premiers Crus occupy various well-exposed slopes, while the flatter and cooler sites are home to Village Chablis.
The top Grands Crus from the various Montrachet vineyards can cost $400 or $500, while the Grands Crus of Chablis are usually priced in the double digits. Even generic Chablis can be a fine drink, with a citric snap and a touch of minerality, particularly in vintages like 2007 and 2008. The 2009 vintage is a little richer and fleshier, which might make it a good introductory Chablis for those with New World palates. When I first wrote about Chablis, one had to be very choosy with makers, some of whom were lazy and others over-infatuated with new oak barrels, but the level of wine making overall has greatly improved in recent years.
Raveneau and Dauvissat have long been acknowledged as the top producers, but William Fèvre, under the management of the brilliant Joseph Henriot, has now joined their ranks. Top wines from these domaines develop incredible complexity with age. Domaine Drouhin Vaudon, owned by the Beaune-based negotiant Joseph Drouhin, has made particularly impressive 2008s. (Not to be confused with Droin, which has also made its best wines yet with this vintage.) The local cooperative La Chablisienne turns out surprisingly good Chablis at all levels. Some other favorites: Billaud-Simon, Louis Michel, Christian Moreau, Pinson, Daniel Dampt, Laroche, and Barat.
These and other makers may convince you that it’s possible to taste rocks, or even fossils, in your glass. At the very least you will discover the best of all possible matches for an oyster.
Cold Heaven, Hot Mama
Making a name for oneself as a winemaker with a grape that almost no one has ever heard of is a bit like writing pop songs for the cello. “Eleanor Rigby” aside, you’re probably starting with a handicap. But Morgan Clendenen had her reasons for choosing Viognier as the focus of her aspirations when she started Cold Heaven in 1996. For one thing, her then husband, Jim Clendenen, cast a long shadow as the godfather of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the Santa Barbara region. Starting his winery, Au Bon Climat, in 1982, he’d been instrumental in showing the potential these Burgundian varietals had, which influenced his wife’s decision to try something different. That and the fact that she loved Viognier, a passion I happen to share.
Although it seems to be a descendant of the northern Italian Nebbiolo, this grape found a home on the steep slopes of the Rhône River just south of Côte Rôtie in a small appellation called Condrieu. It appeared to be headed for extinction just a few decades ago; in the French agricultural census of 1968 only thirty-five acres remained here and in the tiny adjacent appellation of Château-Grillet. Fortunately, Condrieu was rediscovered in part thanks to the enthusiasm of Robert Parker and to the efforts of Etienne Guigal, the renowned Côte Rôtie winery, which has become the largest producer of Condrieu. Indeed, there was a moment when Condrieu was almost fashionable, at least among wine wonks.
What makes Condrieu irresistible to s
ome of us is its heady aroma and flavors, both of which suggest peaches and apricots and honeysuckle, as well as its rich, viscous texture. The best smell as if they will be sweet, and even start out tasting that way, but finish dry. They are full-bodied, voluptuous whites that stop just short of being floozy. Viognier is low in acid, and if it gets too ripe, it will remind you of the syrup at the bottom of canned fruit salad. In Condrieu, the climate and the soils, not to mention generations of experience, usually seem to keep Viognier from putting on the red light. But there will always be a hint of decadence, something fin de siècle and Oscar Wildeish, about it.
In the past two decades Condrieu fans have planted Viognier around the world, from the Languedoc to Australia, with decidedly mixed results. In California’s central coast, pioneers like John Alban and Calera’s Josh Jensen made some promising examples; more recently, Greg Brewer has produced racy Viogniers at Melville in the Santa Rita Hills appellation. Morgan Clendenen, who looks in person like a cross between Jodie Foster and Kate Hudson, grew up in rural North Carolina, where her father had a bottled-springwater company. “My dad would set up water tastings. I became attuned to slight variations in flavors and tastes.” When she got a job with a local wine importer, she noticed that the Calera Viognier always sold out in advance, and while she never got to taste it, she was intrigued. Moving west to pursue her interest in wine, she spent eighteen months at Sinskey Vineyards in Napa, where she met Jim Clendenen. For an aspiring winemaker, marrying such an icon was a mixed blessing. She needed to find her own niche. When the owner of the Sanford and Benedict Vineyard asked Jim if he had any interest in a batch of Viognier, “Jim said no, but I kicked him under the table,” she says. “I was interested.” Thus was her Cold Heaven winery born.
“I loved Condrieu but was less than impressed with most of the California Viogniers that started appearing in the nineties. In Condrieu it makes this elegant noble wine, but here in California it was sweet and cloying.” In fact, most Golden State microclimates are probably too hot for Viognier, but Clendenen believed that parts of the central coast, with its transverse valleys that funnel cool Pacific air into the interior, could prove congenial. Cool heaven, so to speak. (The winery is actually named after a Yeats poem.) After stumbling on the grapes from Sanford and Benedict in 1996—no one could quite tell her when they were planted or by whom—she decided to plant more at the Le Bon Climat Vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley in 1998. With her husband she traveled to Condrieu to taste Viognier at the source. She wanted to meet Yves Cuilleron, the rising star of the appellation, but he was away when she first visited, and she subsequently ran into him in her own backyard at the Hospice du Rhône in Paso Robles, an annual event celebrating Rhône Valley wine varietals.
Cuilleron’s grandfather had founded the estate, although Yves had little interest in wine when he was growing up. “I thought I would be a mechanic,” he told me when I first visited him, as we walked the steep Chaillon vineyard looking down on the silvery Rhône River below. “And then, during my military service, I was sent to Alsace, where I became interested in food and wine.” In 1987 he took over the family domaine and helped spark the renaissance of the appellation, taking his place alongside the standard-bearers like Georges Vernay and André Perret.
It’s not hard to imagine him being charmed when he met the attractive young American at the Hospice du Rhône. More important, he liked her wine. She traveled again to Condrieu, and together they hatched an improbable plan—to make a Franco-American blend using grapes from both places. In 2002, Cuilleron shipped several barrels of Condrieu to Santa Ynez, where Clendenen blended them with juice from the Sanford and Benedict Vineyard. The wine, called Deux Cs, quickly became a cult item, fought over by sommeliers on both coasts of the United States. The som who first introduced me to it leaned in close and whispered the news, as if he were offering me something illegal. Jim Clendenen’s wife … Cuilleron … sick juice. (“Sick juice” is sommelier speak for “great wine.”) And indeed it tasted almost criminally decadent.
The duo launched a second wine, Domaine des Deux Mondes, using Sanford and Benedict grapes vinified to Cuilleron’s recipe. Ironically, the master of Condrieu favors a richer, deeper, almost New World style, using new oak barrels, which Clendenen normally eschews, and riper grapes. Her natural style is frankly more Old World; she picks early to maintain acidity and ferments in old barrels. The Clendenen-made, Cuilleron-styled Viognier is called Saints and Sinners—“because in France Yves would be considered a sinner for performing this kind of experiment,” she explains, “but he’s a saint to us Americans.” Whatever, the result tastes more sinful than saintly to me, and I mean that as a compliment. Cuilleron recommends trying his wines with Thai and other spicy Asian cuisines; Clendenen concurs, and also suggests Mexican. I’d add lobster to the list.
The Clendenen marriage ended a few years ago, and Morgan had to scramble to find a new home for her winery, formerly housed in the sprawling Au Bon Climat and Qupé quarters Jim shares with the Syrah star Bob Lindquist in the middle of the Bien Nacido Vineyards. But her partnership with Cuilleron continues. Her own Cold Heaven Viogniers are available from the winery, and Cuilleron’s Condrieus can be found, intermittently, in most major American markets. The largest producer of Condrieu, Guigal, is easier to find and inevitably excellent, as are the more exclusive bottlings of André Perret and Georges Vernay. Alban, Calera, and Melville are among the most consistent California producers. When you find any of the above, feel free to pop the cork right away. Not particularly benefiting from age, Viognier is a wine of instant gratification. It’s a wine for hedonists, for followers of Dionysus rather than of Apollo, for those who secretly like Gauguin more than Cézanne.
Oh No! Not Pinot Grigio!
Oddly enough, the first time I encountered Pinot Grigio was at Elaine’s, the legendary Manhattan restaurant, back in the eighties, when the literary lions of the silver age were roaring and preening there. This is what Norman Mailer called his era; Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner ruled the golden age, and I was a representative, he informed me cheerfully, of the bronze age. Most of the writers who frequented the place drank scotch mixed with testosterone. Mailer, George Plimpton, William Styron, Peter Maas, Gay Talese, Kurt Vonnegut—these guys were the highball generation, and they seldom bothered with anything as wimpy as white wine. Nevertheless, women were usually present, and I recall a lot of Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio on the tables. Not being much of a scotch fan, I drank gallons of it myself, though I tried not to do so when Mailer was watching. Many others, apparently, were doing the same.
Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio is one of the great marketing success stories of modern times, the reason that Pinot Grigio is virtually a brand name, the second-most-requested wine by the glass in American restaurants. It was pretty much unknown in the United States when Tony Terlato, a young importer, went to Italy in 1979 in search of the next great white varietal. The story goes that at a hotel in Milan he was charmed by a glass of something called Pinot Grigio and promptly drove to Alto Adige, in northeastern Italy, to find it. “Upon arriving,” according to the Terlato Wines Web site, “Tony sat down at a small restaurant in a local inn and ordered 18 bottles of Pinot Grigio off of the wine list.” The winner was called Santa Margherita. He promptly set off to visit the winery and secure the rights to import the wine. Thirty years later, Santa Margherita annually exports 600,000 cases to the States, selling at around $30 a bottle retail, while brands like Cavit and Ecco Domani have taken advantage of demand with lower-priced wines. The Australian wine giant Yellow Tail is piling on with its own version. PG has become such a celebrity it has impersonators; according to one industry insider, the price of these grapes in Italy has soared to the point that much of what gets sold as Pinot Grigio is in fact composed of cheaper white grapes like Chardonnay and Garganega.
It’s doubtful whether PG would have become famous if it had been called Gray Pinot. The grape originated in France—where it’s called Pinot Gris—as
a mutation of Pinot Noir, but it never got much recognition under that name. Still, the variety does well elsewhere, and it’s interesting that some New World producers call their wines Pinot Gris while others, like Steve Clifton of Palmina, use the Italian moniker. And weirdly enough, in Alsace, where it reaches perhaps its greatest heights, it’s sometimes called Tokay. Go figure.
In Oregon, where it has become something of a specialty, most producers use the French name. It was introduced here by the same man who brought Pinot Noir to the Willamette Valley, David Lett of Eyrie Vineyards, and acreage has increased steadily over the years. At its best Oregon Pinot Gris tastes like ripe pears, with smoky highlights. Some makers barrel ferment the grapes, like their counterparts in Alsace, which results in a slightly richer wine than is typical in Italy. “It has a unique spicy style that goes well with Asian and fusion cuisine,” says Mark Vlossak of St. Innocent Winery, in Salem, who makes one of the real standouts. Initially, he emulated the Italian model, but after visiting Alsace, he moved toward that region’s richer style.
In eastern Long Island, where the climate is similar to that of Friuli, the source of the best Italian examples, Christopher Tracy of Channing Daughters uses the name Pinot Grigio. He fell in love with the crisp Friulian versions and thinks the grape deserves more respect. “Done with care with moderate to low yields, it can be amazing.” He loves the “oilier and weightier” Alsatians but feels his climate is better suited to the style of northeast Italy. “The flavor profile with luck has that elusive minerality. And also a white-flower quality and a tree-fruit character.” Tracy makes a crisp, stony tank-fermented version and also a Ramato style, fermented with the skins, which can vary in color from purple to gray. This was the traditional method in Friuli for many centuries. Ramato, which means “copper” in Italian, describes the color of the finished wine, which is much richer than the white versions. “The majority of the flavor compounds are in the first six or seven layers of cells in the skins, and as a result the Ramato is more intensively flavored.” In fact it’s a very intense, rich dry wine that behaves more like a red than a white, and it does well with anything barbecued and is also great with a cheese plate.